The Guard Dog

by Dick King-Smith

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  About the Author

  Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.

  Discover more about Dick King-Smith at:

  dickkingsmith.com

  “Captivating … clever and economical story in which Dick King-Smith makes the most of his rare ability to inject his heroes with human strengths and weaknesses, whilst retaining their animal characteristics to the full”

  Books for Your Children

  “Delightful doggy tale”

  Publishing News

  “Dick King-Smith creates a complete world of humans and animals, and their complex relationships. There is humour and sadness. There is plenty of action. Jocelyn Wild’s scribbly line drawings add to the general feeling of pace within the book. An entrancing and captivating read … The prolific author has done it again … written a winner!”

  Junior Bookshelf

  “Charming, funny tale”

  Daily Mail

  “It’s a gorgeous story … I must say I cried at the end because I was so moved … He is a terrific writer and I thought the drawings were absolutely marvellous”

  Jilly Cooper

  “Dick King-Smith has brought magic into the lives of millions of children”

  Parents Magazine

  Some other books by Dick King-Smith

  BLESSU

  DINOSAUR SCHOOL

  DINOSAUR TROUBLE

  DUMPLING

  FAT LAWRENCE

  THE FOX BUSTERS

  GEORGE SPEAKS

  THE GOLDEN GOOSE

  HARRY’S MAD

  THE HODGEHEG

  THE JENIUS

  JUST BINNIE

  LADY DAISY

  THE MAGIC CARPET SLIPPERS

  MAGNUS POWERMOUSE

  MARTIN’S MICE

  THE MOUSE FAMILY ROBINSON

  POPPET

  THE QUEEN’S NOSE

  THE SCHOOLMOUSE

  THE SHEEP-PIG

  SMASHER

  THE SWOOSE

  UNDER THE MISHMASH TREES

  THE WATER HORSE

  Chapter One

  There were six puppies in the window of the pet shop. People who know about dogs would have easily recognized their breeds. There was a Labrador, a springer spaniel, an Old English sheepdog, a poodle and a pug.

  But even the most expert dog-fancier couldn’t have put a name to the sixth one. In fact, most of those who stopped to look in the pet-shop window either didn’t notice it (because it was so extremely small) or thought it was a rough-haired guinea-pig (which it resembled in size and shape) that had got into the wrong pen.

  “What on earth is that?” the rest had said to one another when the sixth puppy was first put in with them. “Looks like something the cat dragged in!” And they sniggered amongst themselves.

  “I say!” said the Old English sheepdog puppy loudly. “What are you?”

  The newcomer wagged a tail the length of a pencil-stub.

  “I’m a dog,” it said in an extremely small voice.

  The pug snorted.

  “You could have fooled me,” said the poodle.

  “Do you mean,” said the Labrador, “that you’re a dog, as opposed to a bitch?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “But what sort of dog?” asked the springer spaniel.

  “How d’you mean, what sort?”

  The pug snorted again, and then they all started barking questions.

  “What breed are you?”

  “What variety of dog?”

  “Why are you so small?”

  “Why are you so hairy?”

  “Are you registered with the Kennel Club?”

  “How many champions have you in your pedigree?”

  “Pedigree?” said the sixth puppy. “What’s a pedigree?

  There was a stunned silence, broken at last by a positive volley of snorts.

  “Pshaw!” said the pug. “He’s a mongrel!”

  At that they all turned their backs and began to talk among themselves.

  “I say!” said the Labrador. “D’you know what I’m going to be when I grow up?”

  “A gun-dog, I bet,” said the springer spaniel, “like me. I’m going to be a gun-dog and go out with my master and bring back the pheasants he shoots.”

  “No,” said the Labrador, “as a matter of fact I’m not. I’m going to be a guide-dog for the blind. A much more worthwhile job.”

  “No more worthwhile than mine,” said the Old English sheepdog. “I’m going to work sheep. I’ll be galloping about all over the countryside …”

  “… getting filthy dirty,” interrupted the poodle, “while I’m having my coat shampooed and specially trimmed and clipped, and a silk ribbon tied in my topknot. I’m going to be a show-dog and win masses of prizes.”

  The pug snorted.

  “What about you?” barked the others. “You haven’t said what you’re going to be when you grow up.”

  “I am going to be a lap-dog,” said the pug loftily. “I shall be thoroughly spoiled and eat nothing but chicken and steak, and the only exercise I shall take will be to walk to my food-dish. Pshaw!”

  “What about me?” said that extremely small voice. “You haven’t asked me what I’m going to be when I grow up.”

  The Labrador yawned.

  “Oh, all right,” it said. “Tell us if you must.”

  “I,” said the sixth puppy proudly, “am going to be a guard-dog.”

  At this the others began to roll helplessly about, yapping and yelping and snorting with glee.

  “A guard-dog!” they cried.

  “Mind your ankles, burglars!”

  “He’s not tall enough to reach their ankles!”

  “If he did, those little teeth would only tickle them!”

  “Perhaps his bark is worse than his bite!”

  “It is!” said the sixth puppy. “Listen!”

  Then, out of his hairy little mouth came the most awful noise you can possibly imagine. It was a loud noise, a very very loud noise for such a tiny animal, but its volume was nothing like as awful as its tone.

  Think of these sounds: chalk scraping on a blackboard, a wet finger squeaking on a window-pane, a hacksaw cutting through metal, rusty door-hinges creaking, an angry baby screaming, and throw in the horribly bubbly sound of someone with a really nasty cough. Mix them all up together and there you have the noise that the sixth puppy made.

  It was a dreadful noise, a revolting disgusting jarring vulgar noise, and it set all the creatures in the pet shop fluttering and scuttering about in panic. As for the other puppies, they bunched together as far away as they could get, their hackles raised, their lips wrinkled in loathing.

  At last, after what seemed an age, the sixth puppy stopped. Head on one side, he wagged his pencil-stub tail.

  “You see,” he said happily in his usual extremely small voice. “I can make quite a rumpus when I really try.”

  Chapter Two

&nbs
p; “Nobody will buy him,” said the other puppies later. “That’s for sure.”

  “What a racket!” said the sheepdog.

  “It made me feel quite ill!” said the gun-dog.

  “A really common noise!” said the guide-dog.

  “Made by a really common animal!” said the show-dog.

  “Pshaw!” said the lap-dog.

  They all stared balefully at the guard-dog.

  “The sooner he’s sold, the better,” they said.

  And that afternoon, he was.

  Into the pet shop walked a tall lady with a face that looked as though it had a bad smell under its nose, and a small fat girl.

  “I am looking for a puppy,” said the lady to the shopkeeper, “for my daughter. I know nothing about dogs. Which of these would you recommend?”

  All the puppies lolloped forward to the inner wire of the pen, whining and wagging and generally looking as irresistible as puppies do. All, that is, except the guard-dog. He sat alone, small and silent. He was not exactly sulking – that was not in his nature – but he still felt very hurt.

  “Nobody will buy him. That’s for sure,” they had said.

  He resigned himself to life in a pet shop.

  The shopkeeper was busy explaining the various virtues of the five pedigree puppies when the fat child, who was standing, sucking her thumb, took it out with a plop.

  She pointed at the guard-dog.

  “Want that one,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s just a mongrel puppy, dear,” said the shopkeeper. “I expect Mummy would prefer …”

  “Want that one.”

  “But, darling …”

  The small fat girl stamped her small fat foot. She frowned horribly. She hunched her shoulders. With a movement that was as sudden as it was decisive, she jammed her thumb back in her small fat mouth.

  “She wants that one,” said her mother.

  By the end of that day, the guard-dog was feeling pretty pleased with life. To be sure, there were things about his new owners that he did not quite understand. It seemed, for example, that simple pleasures like chewing carpets and the bottom edges of curtains drove the lady into what he considered a quite unreasonable rage, and as for the child, she was temperamental, he thought, to say the least.

  Though at first she had seemed willing to play with him, she soon began to complain that his teeth were too sharp or his claws too scratchy or his tongue too slobbery, and had made a ridiculous fuss over a doll which had sported a fine head of hair and was now bald.

  Strange creatures, he thought that night when at last all was quiet, but I mustn’t grumble. I’m warm and well-fed and this seems a very fine house for a guard-dog to guard. Which reminds me – it’s time I was off on my rounds.

  Ears cocked, nose a-quiver, he pattered off on a tour of the downstairs rooms.

  His patrol over, he settled down in a basket in the kitchen. There was plain evidence that he had done his duty. In the centre of the drawing-room, for example, there was a fine white fleecy rug, and in the centre of the rug was a bright yellow pool. In other rooms there were other messes.

  Comfortable now, the guard-dog closed his extremely small eyes. It had been a tiring day, and he was just drifting off to sleep when suddenly, outside the kitchen door, he heard a stealthy sound! He leaped to his feet.

  Chapter Three

  Afterwards the family could not understand why their cat would never again enter the house, but lived, timidly, in the garden shed. They did not know that its nerves had been shattered by the simple act of pressing against the cat-flap, something it had done every day of its life. This had resulted instantly in a noise that sounded to its horrified ears like a number of cats being scrunched up in a giant mincer. Upstairs, the fat child woke screaming, and soon her mother came rushing down those stairs and stepped in something unusual at the bottom.

  Even then the guard-dog might still have had a house to guard (for it was difficult for them to believe that so little a creature was capable of making so ghastly a noise), if only he had kept his mouth shut the next morning.

  But he stuck to his task, challenging everything that seemed to him a threat to the territory which it was his duty to protect. Quite early, at the sound of whistling and the chink of bottles outside the door, he woke his owners once more. And no sooner had they taken the milk in than the postman knocked, and they actually saw the guard-dog in action.

  Happily unaware of the effect of his voice upon the human ear, and mindful only of his role – to give warning of the approach of strangers – the guard-dog kept it up all morning.

  The cleaning woman (who found a great deal of cleaning to do), the paper boy, the electricity man come to read the meter, and a door-to-door salesman were each in turn greeted by the dreadful medley of sounds that emerged, full blast, from the guard-dog’s tiny throat. Last came a collector for the RSPCA, the rattle of whose tin inspired the guard-dog to his loudest, longest and most furious outburst.

  “RSPCA?” screamed his distracted owner. “What about a society for the prevention of cruelty to people?” And at midday, as she unscrewed the Aspirin bottle, she said to her daughter, “I’m sorry, darling, but I cannot stand that row a moment longer. It’ll have to go. Will you be very upset?”

  The small fat girl, her eyes fixed malevolently upon the guard-dog, did not even bother to remove her thumb from her mouth. She merely shook her head, violently.

  That afternoon the guard-dog found himself, to his surprise, in a very different kind of home – the Dogs’ Home. He could not make out what had gone wrong. What were guard-dogs meant to do if not guard? He had only done his duty, but all he had received so far had been angry looks and angry words before finally they bundled him into their car, and drove him to a strange place full of strange dogs and left him.

  From the kennel he had been given, Number 25, he looked round him. There was every sort of dog in the kennel block, young and old, handsome and ugly, large and small (though none remotely as small as he). Why were they all there?

  “Why are we all here?” he asked the dog directly opposite him, a sad-looking animal with long droopy ears and a long droopy face.

  “Because,” said the dog dolefully, “we are all failures.”

  I don’t get it, thought the guard-dog. My job is to give warning of the approach of strangers. I’ve never yet failed in that.

  “I don’t think I’m a failure,” he said.

  “Well, you’re certainly not a success,” said the long-faced dog, “or you wouldn’t be here. All of us are here because our owners couldn’t stand us any longer.”

  “But we’ll get new owners, won’t we?”

  “Possibly. It depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On whether you take someone’s fancy. You just have to do whatever you’re best at. Me, I’m best at looking sad. Some people like that.”

  In the days that followed, many people in search of a suitable pet came to inspect the twenty or so current inmates of the Dogs’ Home; and when they came to the end of the range of kennels and found the smallest inhabitant, they would without exception break into smiles at the sight of such a charming little scrap.

  Without exception, however, they were treated to the dreadful spectacle of the guard-dog doing what he was best at. And without exception the smiles vanished, to be replaced by looks of horror as they turned away with their hands clapped to their ears.

  By the time the guard-dog had been in the Dogs’ Home for a week, most of the animals had gone happily (or in the case of the long-faced dog, sadly) away with new owners, and there were newcomers in most of the kennels.

  By the thirteenth day, there was only one dog left of those who had been there when he was admitted. This was his next-door neighbour, an old and rather smelly terrier.

  The guard-dog’s attempts to make conversation with it had always thus far been met with a surly growl, so he was quite surprised when he was suddenly addressed.

  “You bi
n in ’ere thirteen days, littl’un, an’t you?” said the terrier.

  “Oh,” said the guard-dog, “have I?”

  “Ar. You come in day after I. ’Tis my fourteenth day.”

  “Oh well,” said the guard-dog, “try not to worry. I’m sure you’ll soon be gone.”

  “Ar,” said the terrier. “I shall. Today.”

  “But how can you know that? How can you know that someone’s going to take you away today?”

  “Fourteen days is the limit, littl’un. They don’t keep you no longer than that.”

  “Why, what do they do with you then?”

  “An’t nobody told you?”

  “No.”

  “Ar well,” said the old terrier. “’Tis all right for us old uns, ’tis time to go. I shan’t be sorry. You don’t feel nothing, they do say. But ’tis a shame for a nipper like you.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the guard-dog. “What are you trying to tell me?” But though he kept on asking, the old dog only growled at him, and then lay silent, staring blankly out of its kennel. Later, a man in a white coat came and led it gently away.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh, thanks,” said the manager of the Dogs’ Home, when one of his kennelmaids brought in his cup of coffee at eleven o’clock next morning. He looked up from his record book.

  “Shame about the little titchy one in Number twenty-five,” he said.

  “You don’t mean …?” said the kennelmaid.

  “’Fraid so. If things had been slack we could have kept him longer, but the way dogs are pouring in, we must keep to the two-week rule. He’s one for the vet today.”

  “Oh dear,” said the kennelmaid. “He’s such a lovely little fellow. Dozens of people fell for him, until …”

  “… until he opened his mouth,” said the manager. “I know. It’s a pity, but you can’t blame them. In all my long experience of every sort of dog, I’ve never come across one with such a dreadful voice. Nobody could possibly live with that; though, talk about burglar alarms – any burglar would run a mile if he heard that hullabaloo. And you wouldn’t need to dial nine-nine-nine – they’d hear it at the nearest police station easy.”